The quietness of Chapman's writing conveys Marta's claustrophobia and her ongoing attempts to ''focus on her domestic life and ward off all other thoughts''. I was also really interested in long-term marriages, and how those kind of relationships stagnate, and those two things brought me to Marta.'' ''That's where started, though it changed dramatically during the writing process. ''I was really fascinated by the idea that something could happen and you can block it out and have the memories come back 20 years on,'' Chapman says. Not to give too much away, there are some resonances here to the Josef Fritzl case, in which Fritzl locked his daughter in a basement for 24 years, raped her repeatedly and fathered seven children, three of whom he imprisoned with her.Ĭhapman read about the case (which inspired Emma Donoghue's bestseller, Room), but the original idea came to her four years ago while watching a television documentary about the experience of long-term psychological and sexual abuse.ĭeeper research uncovered cases of repressed memory among women who suffered severe sexual trauma, and of sudden and disembodied flashbacks. Marta's brittleness lies at the heart of Chapman's novel, her isolation evoked by a bleak frontier landscape never named, of chill winds, taciturn villagers, and a home shuttered from sunlight. When she tricks Hector and skips her ''pink pills'', the dull fog of their early married years lifts, and Marta begins to wonder who is the blonde girl in grimy white pyjamas who stares at her with unblinking grey eyes, begging for her help.
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